The Great Deep Sea Mining Debate: Potato-Sized Rocks and the Future of Everything

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Abyss (Just Kidding, We Should Definitely Worry)

I understand not everyone shares my excitement for 'weird rocks,' but I deeply care about the well-being of my fellow human beings, animals, and sea creatures. A healthy ocean is crucial for all life on Earth, including our own. We've also discovered some incredibly valuable rocks, so let's explore the connections, understand what this all means, and consider how robots and AI could be instrumental in achieving a positive outcome here.

---

Picture this: Four miles underwater, in complete darkness, lie billions of potato-sized rocks that might power our electric future—or destroy one of Earth's last pristine frontiers. Welcome to the weirdest gold rush in human history.

---

The Weird Rocks That Started It All

These aren't your garden-variety potatoes. We're talking about polymetallic nodules—lumps of metal that have been sitting on the ocean floor for tens of millions of years, growing at the breakneck speed of 1-15 millimeters per million years. That's roughly the rate at which your fingernails would grow if you were a geological formation.

Each nodule is basically nature's slow-cooker recipe for critical metals: throw in some manganese (28-34%), add nickel (1.3-1.4%), a dash of copper and cobalt, let it simmer for a few million years around a shark tooth or quartz grain, and voilà—you've got the ingredients for electric car batteries and renewable energy infrastructure.

The Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean, stretching between Hawaii and Mexico, contains an estimated $233 trillion worth of these metallic potatoes. That's not a typo. We're talking about more nickel, cobalt, and manganese than exists in all land-based reserves combined.

---

---

Enter the Underwater Gold Rush

Here's where things get interesting—and by interesting, I mean potentially catastrophic. Companies are developing giant underwater vacuum cleaners to suck up these nodules, along with everything else on the seafloor. The process is exactly as subtle as it sounds.

The operation works like this:

1. Deploy robot harvesters that "gently vacuum" nodules (imagine a Roomba the size of a small building)

2. Pump the slurry of rocks, sediment, and seawater up through massive tubes

3. Sort the good stuff on surface ships

4. Dump the waste back into the ocean

What could possibly go wrong?

---

---

The "Dark Oxygen" Plot Twist

Just when you thought this story couldn't get weirder, scientists announced they'd discovered "dark oxygen" production—oxygen being created in total darkness, possibly by these very nodules acting like underwater batteries.

This would have been revolutionary. The kind of discovery that rewrites textbooks and makes you question everything you know about life on Earth.

Except... it turns out the science was about as solid as a chocolate teapot.

The study claiming this breakthrough had more holes than Swiss cheese:

• They forgot to measure hydrogen (kind of important when you're claiming water electrolysis)

• Their voltage readings were too low to actually split water molecules

• Control experiments without nodules still showed oxygen increases

• The authors basically admitted their evidence didn't support their claims

The whole thing became a perfect case study in how "groundbreaking" scientific claims can go viral before anyone bothers to check if they actually hold water (pun intended).

What We're Actually Talking About Destroying

While everyone was distracted by the oxygen drama, the real story remained: we're considering strip-mining one of Earth's least understood ecosystems.

The deep sea isn't the barren wasteland many imagine. It's home to:

• Sponges and corals that take thousands of years to grow

• Unique creatures found nowhere else on Earth

• Ecosystems so specialized they might never recover from disturbance

A single mining operation could devastate 8,000-9,000 square kilometers over 30 years. For perspective, that's roughly the size of Puerto Rico.

The environmental damage isn't theoretical—we have data. Mining tests from the 1970s and 1980s left scars that are still visible today, 44 years later. Recovery times are measured in decades to centuries, if recovery happens at all.

---

---

The Governance Nightmare

Managing this potential disaster falls to the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body that sounds more organized than it actually is. They're supposed to regulate mining in international waters based on the principle that seabed resources are the "common heritage of mankind."

Noble idea. Execution? Well, let's just say they missed their own deadline to create basic safety rules by about two years and counting.

Thanks to something called the "two-year rule" (a legal loophole that sounds like it was designed by someone with a sense of humor), companies might soon be able to start mining even without proper regulations in place. It's like letting people drive before inventing traffic lights.

The Money Problem

Here's where the dry humor practically writes itself: despite all the hype about trillion-dollar resources, the deep-sea mining industry is... broke.

Companies like The Metals Company projected extracting 12 million tons annually but managed only 3,000 tons in a two-month test—less than 1% of their target. That's not a proof of concept; it's a proof that maybe they should have done their homework first.

Even more entertainingly, one Norwegian mining company recently announced plans to fund operations through a Bitcoin treasury. Because apparently, combining one highly speculative industry with another seemed like solid financial planning.

The Alternatives (Here's the Optimism)

Before you despair completely, remember that we're not actually doomed to choose between destroying the deep sea and abandoning renewable energy. We have options:

Urban Mining: Instead of digging up the seafloor, we could mine our e-waste. Companies like Redwood Materials are already recovering valuable metals from old phones and batteries. It's like recycling, but with better profit margins.

Material Innovation: Scientists are developing sodium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries (Also Antimony), and other alternatives that don't require exotic deep-sea metals. Sometimes the best solution is to need less stuff, not find more stuff.

Better Land-Based Mining: While not perfect, improving existing terrestrial mining with precision techniques and closed-loop water systems beats creating entirely new environmental disasters.

Actually Using Less: Revolutionary concept, but maybe we don't need to replace every device every two years.

The Current Scorecard

Team Moratorium: 32 countries, major automakers (BMW, Rivian), tech companies (Apple, Google), and financial institutions (Deutsche Bank, Lloyds) have said "thanks, but no thanks" to deep-sea mining.

Team Full Steam Ahead: Some developing nations, a handful of mining companies, and the United States (which isn't even part of the international treaty system but wants to regulate anyway, because why not?).

The Bottom Line

The deep-sea mining debate isn't really about potato-shaped rocks or mysterious oxygen production. It's about whether we can resist the urge to ransack every corner of the planet in pursuit of short-term economic gains.

The ocean floor has been quietly doing its thing for millions of years—storing carbon, supporting unique life, maintaining the planet's largest ecosystem. Maybe, just maybe, we should figure out what we're dealing with before we start vacuuming it up.

The good news? For once, the precautionary principle seems to be winning. More countries are calling for moratoriums, companies are developing alternatives, and even the financial markets are getting nervous about the industry's prospects.

The deep sea will still be there in a few decades when we've figured out sustainable alternatives. The question is whether we're smart enough to leave it alone until then.

Because if there's one thing human history has taught us, it's that "oops, we probably shouldn't have done that" is a lot easier to say than to undo.

---

What You Can Do:

• Support companies committed to responsible sourcing

• Advocate for extended producer responsibility in electronics

• Contact representatives about supporting deep-sea mining moratoriums

• Extend the life of your devices (yes, even that phone you've been eyeing)

The abyss isn't going anywhere. Let's make sure it stays that way.

//Peace

If you want to,Buy me a coffee

Want to learn more?

---

Highly Recommended Read:

Sources:

1. "Deep-Sea Mining: Environmental Risks and Mineral Opportunities." Discovery Alert, accessed June 25, 2025, https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/deep-sea-mining-technology-2025/.

2. "Dark Oxygen: The Ocean's Hidden O2 Factory." PSU Vanguard, accessed June 25, 2025, https://psuvanguard.com/dark-oxygen-the-oceans-hidden-o2-factory/.

3. "Pacific Ocean - Deep Sea Minerals." Britannica, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/place/Pacific-Ocean/Deep-sea-minerals.

4. "Deep-sea Mining FAQ." Center for Biological Diversity. Accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/deep-sea_mining/pdfs/Deep-seaMiningFAQ.pdf.

5. "Discovery of 'dark oxygen' from deep-sea metal lumps could trigger rethink of origins of life." Live Science, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/discovery-of-dark-oxygen-from-deep-sea-metal-lumps-could-trigger-rethink-of-origins-of-life.

6. "The impact of deep sea mining on marine ecosystems." Innovation News Network, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/new-study-reveals-the-impact-of-deep-sea-mining-on-marine-ecosystems/56783/.

7. "Geopolitics of the Abyss: Power, Metals and Global Fractures." IRIS, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.iris-france.org/en/geopolitics-of-the-abyss-power-metals-and-global-fractures/.

8. "What is Deep Sea Mining?" Power and Resources. Accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.powerandresources.com/blog/what-is-deep-sea-mining.

9. "Deep-sea mining." Wikipedia, accessed June 25, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sea_mining.

10. "Polymetallic Nodules." International Seabed Authority. Accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.isa.org.jm/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/eng7.pdf.

11. "How polymetallic nodules form." Deep Sea Mining, accessed June 25, 2025, https://deepseamining.ac/how_polymetallic_nodules_form.

12. "The Geology of Sea-Floor Massive Sulphides 1.0." OceanRep. Accessed June 25, 2025, https://oceanrep.geomar.de/24637/1/Seiten%20aus%202013%20SPC-1A.pdf.

13. International Seabed Authority. Accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.isa.org.jm/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/eng9.pdf.

14. "The Race for Deep-Sea Resources: Who Owns the Ocean?" SustainabilityNext, accessed June 25, 2025, https://sustainabilitynext.in/the-race-for-deep-sea-resources-who-owns-the-ocean/.

15. "Ranking Member Dexter Slams Deep Sea Mining Push: 'The Economic Argument a Mirage'." Dexter.house.gov, accessed June 25, 2025, https://dexter.house.gov/media/press-releases/ranking-member-dexter-slams-deep-sea-mining-push-economic-argument-mirage.

16. "Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor." Saint Mary's College of California Library, accessed June 25, 2025, https://library.search.stmarys-ca.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_proquest_journals_3091017756&context=PC&vid=01STMARYSCA_INST:BASELINE&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=Everything&query=sub%2Cexact%2C%20Abyssal%20zone%20%2CAND&mode=advanced&offset=20.

17. "Review of "Evidence of Dark Oxygen Production at the Abyssal Seafloor" by Sweetman et al." ResearchGate, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383037889_Review_of_Evidence_of_Dark_Oxygen_Production_at_the_Abyssal_Seafloor_by_Sweetman_et_al.

18. Sweetman et al. "Evidence of Dark Oxygen Production at the Abyssal Seafloor." Nat - EarthArXiv, accessed June 25, 2025, https://eartharxiv.org/repository/object/7533/download/14339/.

19. "TMC Rebuttal to Claims of 'Dark Oxygen Production'." The Metals Company, accessed June 25, 2025, https://metals.co/tmc-statement-on-claims-of-dark-oxygen-production/.

20. "Dark Oxygen Discovery in the Pacific Ocean: What Lies Beneath?" Greenpeace Australia Pacific, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.greenpeace.org.au/article/dark-oxygen-discovery-in-the-pacific-ocean/.

21. "Development of deep-sea mining and its environmental impacts: a review." Frontiers in Marine Science, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2025.1598584/full#:~:text=The%20exploration%20and%20extraction%20processes,et%20al.%2C%202024).

22. "Development of deep-sea mining and its environmental impacts: a review." Frontiers in Marine Science, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2025.1598584/full.

23. "Deep Sea Threats: Mining, Fishing, Geoengineering." Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, accessed June 25, 2025, https://deep-sea-conservation.org/key-threats/.

24. "The impact of deep-sea mining on biodiversity, climate and human cultures." IUCN NL, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.iucn.nl/en/story/the-impact-of-deep-sea-mining-on-biodiversity-climate-and-human-cultures/.

25. "Information Brochure 5 Mining Waste and Disposal." SPC-EU Deep Sea Minerals Project. Accessed June 25, 2025, https://dsm.gsd.spc.int/public/files/resources/Deep%20Sea%20Minerals%20in%20the%20Pacific%20Islands%20Region%20Brochure%205.pdf.

26. "The World Currently Lacks the Ability to Govern Deep-Sea Mining." The Pew Charitable Trusts, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.pew.org/en/about/news-room/opinion/2025/01/15/the-world-currently-lacks-the-ability-to-govern-deep-sea-mining.

27. "New deep sea mining study shows ecosystem recovery from mining could take centuries." Greenpeace Aotearoa, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/press-release/new-deep-sea-mining-study-shows-ecosystem-recovery-from-mining-could-take-centuries/.

28. "Nations Discuss Deep-Seabed Mining in International Waters Amid Growing Concerns." The Pew Charitable Trusts, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/10/09/nations-discuss-deep-seabed-mining-in-international-waters-amid-growing-concerns.

29. "The Mining Code." International Seabed Authority, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.isa.org.jm/the-mining-code/.

30. "The Mining Code: Draft Exploitation Regulations." International Seabed Authority, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.isa.org.jm/the-mining-code/draft-exploitation-regulations-2/.

31. "International Seabed Authority Must Enact a Moratorium on Deep-Sea Mining." Pew Trusts, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2024/02/01/international-seabed-authority-must-enact-a-moratorium-on-deep-sea-mining.

32. "A “Precautionary Pause” Is the Logical Way Forward for Deep-Sea Mining." RIFS Potsdam, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.rifs-potsdam.de/en/news/precautionary-pause-logical-way-forward-deep-sea-mining.

33. "CEO Statement on ISA and USA." The Metals Company, accessed June 25, 2025, https://metals.co/ceo-statement-on-isa-and-usa/.

34. "Deep Sea Mining Companies: 10 Industry Leaders to Watch in 2025." Discovery Alert, accessed June 25, 2025, https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/deep-sea-mining-companies-2025/.

35. "Untouchable metals: How the obligations of UNCLOS States Parties limit the commercial viability of unilateral deep sea mining." EJIL: Talk!, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.ejiltalk.org/untouchable-metals-how-the-obligations-of-unclos-states-parties-limit-the-commercial-viability-of-unilateral-deep-sea-mining/.

36. "Deep-Sea Mining: Risks, Impact, and Alternatives." Oceans Research, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.oceans-research.com/deep-sea-mining-threats-alternatives/.

37. "Companies and Finance." Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, accessed June 25, 2025, https://deep-sea-conservation.org/solutions/no-deep-sea-mining/momentum-for-a-moratorium/companies-and-finance/.

38. "Norwegian Deep Sea Mining Firm Plans $1.2B Bitcoin Treasury." CoinTelegraph, accessed June 25, 2025, https://cointelegraph.com/news/norwegian-deep-sea-mining-firm-adopting-bitcoin.

39. "The Potential Impact of Seabed Mining on Critical Mineral Supply." RAND Corporation. Accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3560-1.html.

40. "Corporate Responsibility and Deep Seabed Mining: The Limits of Due Diligence." Business and Human Rights Journal, Cambridge University Press, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-human-rights-journal/article/corporate-responsibility-and-deep-seabed-mining-the-limits-of-due-diligence/6762B9D5D7E11273D340CA22EA7B0333.

41. "AI in Oceanography and Underwater Robotics." Geeta University Blog, accessed June 25, 2025, https://blog.geetauniversity.edu.in/ai-in-oceanography-and-underwater-robotics/.

42. "Can AI Help Reduce the Environmental Impact of Deep-Sea Mining?" AZoMining, accessed June 25, 2025, https://www.azomining.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1857.

43. "What Are Potential Alternatives to Deep Sea Mining?" Sustainability Directory, accessed June 25, 2025, https://energy.sustainability-directory.com/question/what-are-potential-alternatives-to-deep-sea-mining/.

---

To lift you out of any darkness or despair, here's some music.

---

---